


The Face You Make Yourself

by streetsuss_serenade



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 01:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15353229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/streetsuss_serenade/pseuds/streetsuss_serenade
Summary: Evan had stepped forward on impulse to save the man's life. He hadn't planned on signing up for months of fighting to save an entire country, but here he was.Gen Kill Bingo Prompt: Qtip +Transformation





	The Face You Make Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> _God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. - William Shakespeare, Hamlet_
> 
>  
> 
> This is written with deep gratitude for Robin McKinley who introduced me to worlds and magic like this and to Naomi Novik, who gave me the idea for the character’s physical transformation. I’m playing in the landscape they constructed, and I owe them a great debt.

“It’s not what you think,” Evan said as soon as Mike stalked into camp.

“You say that too often,” Mike said dourly. “Maybe you should spend less time doing things that aren’t what I think and more time keeping your demmed head down like you’re supposed to.”

“It was only a small glamour,” Evan protested. “I tied it into the wards and hid it in the chaos of the sun’s rising. No one felt it, and even if they did, they couldn’t trace it.”

“I felt it,” Mike growled. His hands were clenched by his side, and Evan knew that it was only years of rigorous discipline that kept him in check. He wouldn’t allow anything to endanger his charge, not even Evan.

“You felt it because you’re also tied to the wards,” Evan assured him. “I wove you into them, so they would recognize you and let you come and go. No one else could have sensed it - not even the others.” They both glanced in the direction of the creek, where Nate and John were trying to catch yabbies for breakfast.

Mike waited for further explanation, glaring down at Evan. They’d been traveling together for months, but Mike had a guardsman’s deep distrust of magic and its practitioners, and his acquaintance with Evan couldn’t undo 40 years of prejudice. After all, the common understanding was if magicians could twist reality as they did, who could say what they would do with words?

It was true that Mike’s skepticism wasn’t unjustified. Evan had trouble adjusting in the beginning, adapting his magic from the way he’d been taught to the creeping, hiding magic they needed to run successfully. Evan sometimes wondered if his magic would ever be straightforward again, or if it would always twine under and around, like roots and a vine.

“There was a hunting party heading their way,” Evan said quietly. “I gave them a nudge in a different direction. I didn’t want him to have to lie. Not so soon after the Haymarket tavern.”

Mike looked exhausted all of a sudden. The anger fled, leaving grief in the hollows of his cheeks and the lines around his mouth. They both knew how it hurt Nate, the cover story they’d created for him. They could feel it tainting him, like tarnish on metal.

“No one can track it?” Mike started to ask. Evan shook his head.

“That’s why I tied it into the wards, Roundhead. Those leave a trace anyway, no matter how I try to bury it.”

They both knew that the people who hunted them would find the traces of Evan’s magic eventually. All their party could do was be long gone before they did.

Neither Mike nor Evan could truly understand why denying his identity and his heritage wounded Nate so deeply, but then, neither of them had been sworn to their country since before their very first breath. Nate had been born with a veil, his mother’s caul sheltering him even as he entered the world. Since everyone knew that caul babies were blessed and destined for great things, the midwife had dedicated him to the Queen and Solidago before even clearing it away.

Nate’s cover had never been intended to be permanent. After the Event, the original plan had been to smuggle him across the border to shelter with Evan’s family, while Evan petitioned his university and his Council of Twelve to grant them amnesty. However, as they’d traveled away from Srath Ananny, Evan had been able to See the path between Nate and the Prince weakening. As they’d approached the border, Nate had begun to sicken. It was clear that whatever magic was at work, it was tied to the Prince and likely the country itself.

Now, they traveled in aimless circles around the country, trying to stay unnoticed, to stay as close to the capital city as possible and not to visit the same place twice.

Mike was their guide and tactician. He put his training to good use, plotting their routes, setting their pace and teaching them all to make camp and avoid detection. Evan took care of the wards, hiding them from Magical Sight and wild animals alike. He used his magic to protect Nate as best he could. When it was safe, he veiled Nate on the magical plane. The Enemy would always be able to find him because of the bond between them, but Evan could confuse and befuddle and make it harder for their attacks to reach him. He bolstered Nate’s physical energy as well, giving him some of his own or of John’s. Sometimes he’d utter little cantrips, tying a dash of his magic to a bird or a fish or a floating seed, hoping to make it harder for their pursuers to follow.

When it wasn’t safe to use his magic, and it often wasn’t, Evan drew on every little bit of the herblore and hedgewitch incantations his grandmother had taught him before he’d been sent off to learn “real” magic. He picked tansy asked for luck and made them all carry pine needles for fair fortune. He asked the paths to smooth themselves and the trees to shelter them. The trees near Srath Annany were young and full of their own self-importance, but there were always some who were older even than the country, who didn’t recognize the human-imposed borders and claimed Evan as one of their own. They did what the could to protect the bedraggled party from the rain or to create a slight breeze.

John was their ambassador. He stopped in markets and taverns to learn the news, buy goods or sell their excess meat if hunting had been good. His cheerful nature made him well-liked wherever he went; years of capricious masters had taught him to be well liked without being remembered, and so they slid across the country with little notice.

They were an unlikely company. Mike had come from a well-off trader family, which had purchased his commission for him, and he’d made good on that with years of dedicated service. He considered this merely one more mission in service of the Crown. In contrast, Evan had only been in the country for a few days, taking some time to explore before reporting to his apprenticeship. He hadn’t been thinking of the long-term consequences when he’d stepped in, only that the man in front of him was about to die and Evan knew enough to stop it. John was a commoner who’d had spent his youth as a hired hand in the docks and farms around Srath Annany.

Nate’s job in their little caravan was to live, which was harder than it sounded. The Event had inextricably linked him, not only to the Prince but also to the creatures who’d attacked him. Nate was both with them and not simultaneously. He followed the paths they chose for him, but he also journeyed, and fought, on the magical plane. Sometimes he was more present with them, and other times, he was practically comatose, so much of himself was consumed with protecting the Prince and Solidago.

Evan couldn’t join him in that battle - the barrier that he’d constructed to keep the spell from siphoning Nate’s entire lifeforce sealed Nate, the Prince and the enemy into a closed bond. Sometimes, when the battle was strongest, Evan could See shadows flitting around Nate. At first, he’d thought they were moths that Nate was too distracted to bat away, but he soon realized they were incorporeal. When the battle was weaker, Nate let Evan try to See the bond, to see if he could break in, to see if he could end it. Each time, it came to him as a different indeterminable punishment - driving rain, blasts of intolerable heat, grinding pain. Each time, it drove him back before he could do anything. He had no idea how Nate bore it.

He’d asked one night, when he and John were pressed close to either side of Nate, in an attempt to keep his shaking, shivering form from dislodging his bedroll in the night and leaving him to freeze to death. Nate had looked at him blankly for a moment as if he didn’t understand the question, and then said, “Everything that happens to me is something that doesn’t happen to him.” It seemed as if that was all Nate needed, for he soon fell into a restless sleep, even as his body twisted and twitched, small drops of blood welling on his skin, as if being pricked by a thousand thorns. If Nate cried the Prince’s name in his sleep, Evan didn’t see that it was his place to notice.

It wasn’t always bad - John and Evan had bonded instantly. They had an easy camaraderie, which they played up to undercut the seriousness of their companions. Evan taught John all of the best camp songs from Ephigenia, which they sang off key for hours. Sometimes, John could get Guardsman Wynn to join in by deliberately singing the words to Solidagan tavern songs wrong. Nate didn’t sing, but, on good days, he laughed along with all of them.

The Crown Steward’s job was to advise on what was to come by knowing all that had come before, so Nate had the best stories. If he was feeling up to it, he could keep them entertained for hours with stories of Solidago’s past heroes. Sometimes, when they were bedded down for the night, Wynn could be persuaded to join in the storytelling. At first, they’d played cards by the campfire, but stopped when it became evident that John could fleece them all blindfolded with one hand behind his back. Wynn still hadn’t forgiven John for the absolute drubbing he’d delivered during their first game together.

Lately, it felt like there had been more bad days than good. In the beginning, Nate had hated how helpless he was when the magic drew him in, but now he didn’t even notice enough to care about the indignity. John and Evan traded off riding with him to keep him on his horse. When they bedded down, Guardsman Wynn exhausted himself hunting for all of them and taking watch shifts which should have been Nate’s. Evan tried to balance keeping them warded with feeding Nate his magic to keep Nate alive and with not burning through his own magical energy too quickly - leaving them defenseless if something were to happen. John and Evan split time between camp tasks like gathering wood and cooking dinner and feeding Nate and keeping him hydrated and clean.

After the worst days, when Nate had stared blankly, body limp, comprehending nothing around him from sunup to sundown, Evan laid in his bedroll and thought about leaving. How long was he going to postpone his future for these men? He hadn’t made them any promises, and he had his family to think of, their reputation to uphold. This wasn’t his fight; it wasn’t even his country. He’d only started out with them because he believed that he could break the protective seal he’d created. Why should one impulsive act condemn him to a life of weary traveling, waiting for an answer that might never come?

That was the hell of it. They could be wandering through the countryside with barely enough to eat, never sleeping in a real bed, for years. They had to keep Nate alive because keeping Nate alive was the best way to keep the Prince alive, and the best way to keep Nate alive was for no one to be able to find him. They would wander through the countryside until Nate died or the Prince died or someone figured out how to do the magically impossible and break the bond that Evan and Nate had created the day The Enemy had attacked.

That day was his first in Srath Annany. As requested by his mother, Evan had stopped by the Royal Library as soon as he arrived. The Head Librarian was Ephigenian and had been his mother’s closest friend in school. He tapped his fingers against the arm of some overly-fussy chairs while some lower librarians checked the authenticity of his letter and examined the gift his mother had sent. He wanted to be on his way - he had just finished seven years of study, the last thing he wanted was to spend more time in a library.

As he waited, two men walked past, arguing good-naturedly.

“Draperies. We’re facing one of the worst harvests in recent memories, and this is what my ministers have to offer me. Draperies.”

“I trust you, Brad, to keep your personal feelings to yourself.”

The taller one, Brad, made a disgusted face and they both laughed.

Evan knew they were noble from how they were dressed, but no one around him was reacting as he might expect. No one behind the desks looked up or noticed their presence in any way. This seemed to be an everyday occurrence.

Because Evan was intrigued by this casual approach to nobility, he was watching when they walked out the door, which is why he saw Brad drop like a stone. Even if he hadn’t, the other man’s cry would have had him leaping to his feet.

When Evan reached the anteroom, Brad was lying on the floor, blood pouring out from around a knife of green speckled stone. The man with him was hunched over him, hands pressed to the wound. Everything about the image was wrong. Brad should have been writhing in pain; his friend should have been shouting for help. Instead, both were locked into position- an obvious marker of draining magic.

Evan took a deep breath and focused on opening his vision to the magical plane, to See magic as he’d been taught. When he opened his eyes, he almost lost his focus immediately, confused by what he was seeing. As he’d expected, the jade knife had been spelled to wound not only the body but the soul. Evan could see the blinding white fire of Brad’s lifeforce being pulled into the knife, even as his blood spilled onto the floor. Unchecked, the wound would be fatal.

The surprising part was the second man. His own lifeforce was streaming out of his hands, pouring into the man on the floor. Evan had no idea how he was doing it, but it was clear that the man wasn’t in control - his essence was moving too fast. Brad’s body couldn’t absorb all of it. Much of it was being absorbed by the knife in his side, more was dissipating as it fell useless to the floor. Much longer and the kneeling man would be dead. He’d already gone gray and his hands shook.

Evan didn’t have time to think. He couldn’t let this man, either of these men, die if he could help it. He had to stop their souls from being pulled in by the knife, but any outreach with his own magic might ensnare him in the trap.

The image of flood walls sprang into his mind. Every year, he walked the flood walls along the west fields with his father, checking to make sure they’d hold when the spring melt came. Icy torrents of water came pouring down from the mountains, but the walls channeled them away from fields and homes and diverted them into safe areas. Evan flung his magic forward trying building magical flood walls on instinct, trying to control the flow of burning fire. He frantically drew boundary spells in the air, reinforcing what he’d created. He desperately built layer on layer of protection, until the flow slowed. Now, he focused on drawing a magical net around the knife, trying to disarm its power to drain. His teachers would have a fit if they saw his sloppy work, bits of magic trailing off in all directions, but it held.

When he’d finished, he noticed the chaos around him for the first time. Brad was unconscious. A squadron of guards was keeping back the crowd of people who’d been in the library and were now desperate to see what was going on. Someone had torn the kneeling man away from Brad, though it was clear it had been a struggle. There were smears in the blood on the floor, and more smears on the guard restraining the man. The man was gray-faced, but he was still cursing like a goose and threatening all sorts of creative types of harm if his bodyguard didn’t unhand him and if Evan didn’t explain what exactly in the names of the gods he thought he was doing.

Before Evan had to explain, a man wearing the yellow badge of a healer arrived. He glared at all of them and then told the cursing nobleman that he’d better shut up or get kicked out. He knelt by Brad’s side and began tearing at his clothes to get a better look at the wound. He shoved some bandages and clotting powders in Evan’s hands and snapped “Make yourself useful.”

“Mike,” he said to the guard supporting Brad's companion, “what Solas’s name happened?”

After the man explained that the knife was thrown from the upper gallery and that his colleagues hadn’t been able to find the assassin, the healer’s frown deepened.

“Why are you here?” he asked Evan.

Evan explained what he’d seen and why he’d stepped in. When he explained that Brad’s friend had literally been pouring his own soul into him to keep him alive, the guardsman chided, “Dammit, Nate!”

Before Nate could answer, Evan told them the worst part.

“It’s not over. When I look I can still See a connection between them and the knife. I stopped it from draining anything else, but there is still an energy path between them. I think Nate is the reason that Brad is still alive, despite losing so much blood.”

Nate slumped against Mike. He wasn’t fighting now - Mike’s arms seemed to be around him more for support than restraint. All three of them - the healer, Mike, and Nate - all looked from the wounded man’s face, which was still a healthy tan, and his steadily rising and falling chest to the pool of blood seeping across the mosaic floor.

The healer glowered at Evan. “Convenient that you’re the only one here who can See magic and none of us can verify this yarn you’re spinning.”

Evan was about to protest that he hadn’t had to help at all, and maybe they should consider being a tad grateful when a voice piped out of the crowd.

“Begging your lordships’ pardon, but just in case the tale is true, shouldn’t we move him out of the open, seeing as how we don’t know who did it and all?”

A young man in dock worker’s clothes had fought his way to the front of the crowd and was pointing at Nate, who still hadn’t taken his eyes off of the healer’s hands as they expertly bandaged the man on the floor, careful not to disturb the knife.

Mike visibly startled. He should have thought of that. The dock worker continued “If you don’t think the palace is a good place, you can follow me. I’m Srath Ananny born and raised, know every little place in the city.”

The guardsman and the healer exchanged speaking glances. It was clear to Evan that they couldn’t be sure that the palace was safe, but trusting a man out of the crowd went against all common sense. The healer spoke first.

“I don’t want him going anywhere until we know what’s going on with the Prince.”

The Prince? Evan blinked at him and then stared down at the bloody man on the floor. This was much worse than he’d thought. What had he gotten himself in to?

“You there, boy,” Mike barked at him. “You said you can See magic between this man and the Prince? If we leave, can you follow it?”

Evan nodded. “As long as the bond holds, I’ll be able to find you.”

Mike exchanged another glance with the healer, and then guided Nate out of the circle of the guards and they disappeared into the crowd.

After that, everything was a bit of a blur. Evan was cleaned up and questioned by some guardsmen, and then by some mages, and then by other men. By that point, he was too exhausted to care about what happened to him. He answered over and over. No, he didn’t know who threw the knife. No, he didn’t know what they wanted. Yes, he did think it was an awful coincidence that he just happened to be there. No, he didn’t know how to break the spell. No one would tell him what happened to the man on the floor. Brad. He knew that he was the Crown Prince, but he couldn’t help but think of him as Brad. Covering yourself in someone else’s blood was a good way to begin to feel very familiar with them.

Over and over, Evan wondered how Nate - the Chief Steward - had done it. According to the rules of magic, it shouldn’t have been possible. Non-magical folks couldn’t use magic. They couldn’t tap into their souls to fight magic. It wasn’t an option.

Even now that it was evident that that was exactly what Nate had done, Evan didn’t know how one could feel such deep devotion, such disregard for self. It was one thing for a guardsman to step in front of a sword or an arrow - the mind was arrogant. On a deep level, it thought it would survive no matter what happened to the body. Evan knew that it was possible to train the mind to sacrifice the body, because, at its core, the mind believed it would go on, eternal. Not so with the soul. The soul knew.

With no one to pursue and no hope of breaking the bond, Nate, Evan, Mike and the dockworker, John, had taken to the road. It hadn’t taken long for The Enemy to use the magical bond to track and attack Nate. Evan’s befuddling spells were good enough that they couldn’t track Nate’s physical location, but they could find him on the magical plane, and so they traveled, and Nate fought, and John brought back all of the gossip he heard in taverns and markets.

It was hard to pick through the wildly inaccurate (The Prince was part-monster. He craved human flesh) for the plausible (He wasted away slowly. He wouldn’t see anyone but his advisors) to create a picture of how things went at the capital. Everything that had happened so far was so outlandish, who knew what was possible?

Solidago had turned its back on magic centuries ago, preferring things that could be standardized and routinized. Magic be able to accomplish things more easily, but a machine would never decide one morning that it really preferred to be tree-shaped. Magic wasn’t like mice or other household pests; it couldn’t be eradicated through traps or a vigorous dusting. Still, the country generally left it alone, and magic kept mostly to the mountains and wild spaces.

How could they defeat enemies who attacked via magical means?

No matter how avidly Evan and his companions listened to the gossip, no one seemed to know who’d done this to their prince. The uncertainty permeated every conversation. The entire country waited, in stasis, to see what happened next. Would the prince survive? Why had he survived so far? Had he survived or was it all a ruse from the castle to prevent panic? At least, on the last, the traveling party had Nate to assure them that Prince Brad endured, though even Nate didn’t know his condition.

It wasn’t only the people who were concerned - all around them, Evan could feel the country itself waiting. Shrubs asked one another if they should bloom or save their energy for a safer time. Crops wondered if the energy spent to bud would be wasted when their stalks were trampled by marching armies. The fields they passed had plants in all stages of growth, some twice the size as others, as each plant made its own decisions about the proper use of energy. Mike came back to camp swearing about the gods-cursed strange behavior of the animals in the forests who didn’t run from him but chattered at him, as if he had interrupted something important.

At night Evan spent his watch trying to think about anything other than leaving. He leaned back against his saddlebags and tried to think of the of the seven principles of magic he’d learned in school. He thought about the plants in his grandmother’s greenhouse. He tried to remember the name of his sister’s imaginary friends when they were little. It didn’t work. Over and over again, he thought about how easy it would be. He could set another ward, one that would encircle his companions and keep them from hearing him. He would take only his purse and his tack; his supplies would help lessen the blow of his leaving. Since he wouldn’t be a fugitive anymore, he could take the main roads and sleep in taverns. Often, the only thing that kept him from running was the idea that they’d have no one on watch while they slept.

One night, when they hadn’t seen another person for days and it was so hot that Wynn had to wrap strips of cloth around the hilt of his sword so it didn’t burn him, Evan got as far as standing to draw the extra wards before he stopped. He couldn’t see any of them in the dark, but Evan knew without seeing that Nate looked awful. Sunburnt. Lips chewed up and splitting. Dark circles under his eyes, cheeks gaunt. Tendons stood starkly on his hands. They could never feed him enough to replace the energy he burnt fighting for his country. In the dark, desperate night, Evan loved him fiercely. He sat back down.

On the day of The Event, after hours of questioning, Evan had been taken by the guards out of the room they’d been holding him in and brought into the library’s common room. It was dark, and Evan wondered if the guards were planning something for him that would benefit from the darkness. They turned a corner and his heart leapt to see the leader opening the door to a room lit by a few lamps.

As he entered, he recognized the healer from earlier. Sitting to his left was a woman who was clearly Queen Amelia. Even if the guards hadn’t bowed to her, it would have been impossible to miss the way she commanded the attention of everyone in the room.

“Sit.” She gestured to the chair across from the healer. Evan sat.

“I have been informed that we are very lucky that you happened to be in Solidago today.”

Evan glanced at the healer, but he was impassive. The guards who questioned Evan hadn’t seemed to find his presence very lucky.

The Queen continued, “I have also been informed that you are perhaps the only person who can locate my Chief Steward and his bodyguard and that you’ve been…”

She paused and Evan wondered if there was a skill that all mothers learned to make their pauses seem so threatening. The Queen sounded like his own mother the time he’d cut off all his sister’s hair,  “...reticent to share their location with my men.”

Now she sounded like his interrogators.

“Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but I didn’t see that they needed to know. I don’t know exactly which way is up, but I know enough to know that that man is the key to keeping Br- the Prince alive. Seems to me it’s better if not too many people know where he is.”

She nodded and turned to the healer. “You’re right. I do believe him.”

To Evan, she said, “Thank you for all that you’ve done for us. I do not exaggerate when I say you’ve saved us all. I hope your courage sustains.”

She stood and swept out of the room before Evan had a chance to struggle to his feet. The healer snorted; Evan gave up and plopped back into his chair.

The healer studied him for an uncomfortable moment. Evan wondered what was wrong with these Solidagans that they were so aggressive about eye contact. Finally, the man leaned forward and said, “We don’t know you, but we’ve decided to trust you. Show yourself worthy of that trust or you’ll answer to me.”

The threat was delivered with the matter-of-factness of someone who was confident in his ability to follow through. Evan began to consider that, despite his badge, this man might not only be a healer.

“I have here a purse and a message for Guardsman Wynn. It instructs him to move the Chief Steward to a safe location, and to tell no one in the palace where he is going. We’d like to send magical protection with them, but we don’t know who we can trust as of yet, and it’s too dangerous for them to wait around until our investigation is complete. Because of that, it is up to you to deliver the message.  We'd like you to stay to safeguard them to their next location, but if you go or not is up to you.”

The man stood to go. On his way out the door, he said, “Before you decide, consider this, the entire future of this country would be different if you hadn’t been here today.”

 

When they’d been traveling for eight months, they got the news that the Queen had died. The gossip said she was killed by the same kind of magical attack that had been sent for the Prince, but who knew if that intel was worth the price of dates in Prytania.

When John told them, Nate gripped his reins so hard his mare skittered across the road. He didn’t speak for three days. Mike didn’t react in any way they could see, but that night, when they made camp, he took his chow into the woods, and he didn’t come back until well after moonrise.

Evan didn’t share their grief, but the Queen’s death weighed heavily on his mind. Now that the Prince had been coronated, the final attack would be coming soon. He was sure of it.

He was right. Two weeks later, the trees started warning him to move faster. Not that he could he could understand them, exactly, but there was an urgency to their rustling. The sound of their horses’ hooves on the rocks began to become a repeated chant “Hurry, Hurry Hurry.” All around him, the forest was tense.

A few moments later, Nate pulled up short and said urgently “Something’s happening.” His eyes were wild and not focused on anything that any of the rest of them could see. Evan immediately tried to See the bond, but he was thrown loose before his magic could even get a foothold.

Nate gave him a half-grimace that looked like it was trying to be a smile. “Don’t worry, Rabbit. It isn’t happening to me. I think the prince is doing something.”  

Nate’s use of his nickname, granted by an irritated Mike, raised the hairs on his arms. Nate never used that nickname; he was studiously respectful with all of them, even when he was too weak to lift his own head.

Evan looked to see Mike watching him, concern writ large across his broad face. As with all things that started on the magical plane, the guardsman was prepared to take Evan’s lead. Thanks to all the gods,  Evan had actually been planning for this - options for the final showdown were hard to pinpoint when they didn’t know the form it would take, but he’d done his best.

“We need to get off the road. You two, go find us a spot to hunker down. Look for old trees - oak is best, but anything with deep roots will do. Make sure it’s defensible. They’ve found us. Once you’ve found a place, start digging fortifications and come back and find us.”

As they rode off, Evan called to their backs “And we’ll need a fire!”

The forty minutes that Evan spent with Nate by the side of the road were among the loneliest of his entire life. Nate was aware of what was going on around him, but only barely. His jaw was clenched and his eyes were closed, as he steeled himself against an enemy Evan couldn’t see. Evan didn’t want to waste any of his magic warding them in a temporary position, so he turned his head this way and that, trying to determine if every rustle was help on its way or The Enemy finally finding their location. Mike had taught them all the basics of defense, but most of the lessons boiled down to “keep your attacker off you long enough for you to run away.”

When John led him to the spot that he and Mike had found, Evan was pleased to find an old tree at the top of a small rise; the yellow birch showed the wear of many winters on its bark. Its roots drove down deep into the earth. It was fierce, and if he could convince it to fight for them, it would protect Nate with experience and strength. They nestled Nate on a bedroll at its base, positioning some food and water near him. There was nothing they could do to help him now. That road was his alone.

John and Mike worked quickly and silently to build protections for them. John gathered small rocks for his sling and then began sharpening sticks and sticking them in the ground to trip up their attackers. Mike had dug a ditch at the most likely point of attack and filled it with dry kindling, to be lit when attack was imminent. Now, he was out in the forest setting traps to slow or disable their pursuers.

Evan wasted no time in asking the plants around them if they’d use the sticks John was laying as a trellis. He explained that, if they grew into the strongest hedge they could, then the men he was with would end the waiting, and they’d know what they should do next before the end of the growing season.

Next, he set down the strongest warding spell that he could. He walked the perimeter again and again, smoothing rough points, driving the spell deep into the soil. No point in holding energy in reserve. Once he was sure that they were surrounded by a smooth wall of magic, he considered his next steps.

The problem with warding spells was that they were too effective. Once warded, a thing stayed hidden, but the absence could be tracked just as presence could, and magic users got used to feeling for areas where the ordinary magic of everyday life suddenly became inaccessible.

Evan could get to work building a facsimile to cast over their hiding spot, but he wasn’t sure it was the smartest choice. An illusion would fail if the mages The Enemy had with them were better than he was or trained in Seeing magic. And he wasn’t sure how precisely they could track Nate using his location on the magical plane. If they could find him that way, an illusion would be an exquisite waste of time and energy.

He cursed under his breath. He wished he knew any useful defensive magic, but during school, it hadn’t seemed relevant to the career in academic magic he’d been preparing for.

Mike broke out of the tree line and came running up the hill. He had to pause to step over Evan’s hedge, which was now about three feet tall. He didn’t need to tell them the reason for his hurry. A flock of birds broke from the trees a mile or so away. They’d been found.

As soon as Mike had cleared the hedge, Evan shoved his magic into the plants, giving them energy directly without the intermediary of sun and water. They burst skyward, twining together, growing thicker, until they were impassible. They were still vulnerable to fire and blades, but he was hopeful that the vines would slow down their attackers. The three of them weren’t enough to defeat an attack force, even if he and John had been fighters. All they could hope was to slow things down enough to Nate to do what he needed to do.

Now that their protections were as strong as Evan could make them, it was time for him to cast his final spell - a spell of supplication. The chances that they all fell before Nate was done were high, and his only hope was that the birch would offer him sanctuary.

Normally this spell was done with a clean white cloth, to show proper respect and obeisance, but Evan hadn’t had anything white or clean in months. He hoped the tree understood. He grabbed a knife from his belt and cut a piece off of his shirtwaist. Beckoning John over, he took the knife and sliced a few locks of his hair. John’s hair was dark and glossy, and it was a good representation for the best parts of him: his joy, his brightness in the face of anything, his genuine goodness.

John, used to not understanding Evan’s rituals, didn’t ask any questions. He grabbed Evan in a quick hug and then went to climb into the tree with his sling to wait.

Mike was standing in front of Nate, and Evan knew better than to ask him to move from that spot. He walked over and said quietly, “I need your spit.”

Mike raised an eyebrow and spat into the cloth into Evan’s hand, attention turning immediately back to the hedge expectantly.

Mike’s sweat would have been a more obvious choice for this spell since his strength was his defining feature, but Evan figured his loyalty and his determination to protect them were more valuable by far.

Instead, Evan offered his own strength. It isn’t much, compared to Mike, but it was what he had. He sliced a cut in the shin of his left leg and mopped the blood with the outside of the cloth.

He didn’t move to incorporate any of Nate into the spell. Nate would need every bit of his essence for this fight.

With one hand, he held the scrap of shirt above the fire until it caught. With the other, he held a pan of water to catch the ash as it fell. When it had burnt itself entirely to ash, he took the mixture to the roots of the tree and poured it on the ground.

This was the hardest part. There would be no way to know if their offering was acceptable to the great tree until it was too late to do anything about it.

Evan sat with his companions and waited. Behind him, he could hear Nate’s grunts of pain, but he didn’t dare to take his eyes off the hedge to witness his struggle. After a fleeting eternity, Evan felt the first probes of his wards.

He almost lost his knees from under him. There were at least three magic users out there searching his wards for weakness; there was no way any spell he could cast would stand up to a prolonged onslaught from three mages at once.

Automatically, he moved his magic to repair the spots damaged by the probes. He was a little weak already. Using his own blood in the supplication spell lent it a lot of power, but that power had to come from somewhere.

“Sit down, you fair idiot,” Mike snapped at him, “The fight isn’t for a bit yet and you’re already swaying.”

Evan sat and immediately regretted it. The ground was screaming. He couldn’t describe it, except that he knew, without knowing how, that everything around him was furious that the order of things has been altered. It took him a moment to determine that the anger wasn’t directed at the magic he’d done, but at the invaders. The plants and trees might not recognize the difference between Ephigenia and Solidago, but they knew usurpers when they encountered them.

Without thinking, Evan dug his fingers into the dirt, trying to hear better, trying to understand.

Immediately, he heard, though hearing was not the word, he _knew_ in the same way that he knew the feel of his lungs taking in air or the feel of sun on his skin, he knew that he had been asked a question.

_You will serve?_

Evan’s answer was instantaneous.

Yes.

_Drive them out. Punish them for daring. It’s not enough without you. You will allow it?_

Evan didn’t know what that meant, but if it would drive The Enemy out…

“Yes,” Evan said, “Yes.”

As soon as he thought it, his entire awareness was dissolved into a torrent of magical energy. He thought he’d drown in the endless stream of energy. His last memory of his corporeal form was the feeling of a scream trapped in his throat, and then he was nothing but magic.

 

Evan woke up cursing. His entire body was on fire. The first face he saw was Nate’s and he yelled “You brathny liars! Solidagans don’t use magic, huh? It’s too demmed impractical? You could have mentioned that you don’t use it because you’re storing it in the land to unleash on unsuspecting mages!”

Nate had a black eye and blood running from a cut on the side of his head, but he smiled anyway. “We can’t give away all of our state secrets, even to friends as good as you. How are you feeling?”

“Like I was just used as a channel for hundreds of years of pent-up magic without my say so, that’s how! You’re cursed lucky I was here. What was your backup plan, you wild fools? What happened? Did it work?”

John noticed that he was awake and flung himself onto Evan like a friendly dog, though thankfully without the licking. Evan grunted - the impact hurt him everywhere, but it brought a lump to his throat, and he didn’t complain.

John rolled off of him and sat next to him, helping him struggle into a sitting position. Nate handed him water, while John said “You almost died! The forest almost swallowed you like it did the other dudes, but I wouldn’t let it, and you lived! Mostly!”

Mostly? The forest swallowed him? Evan looked from John to Nate for clarification. Nate shook his head. 

“I was fighting my own battle. John was the only one of us who was here with you.” 

John smiled, enthusiastic and cheerful as always. “After they set the hedge on fire, you yelled and dug your fingers into the ground and I dunno what you did, but the ground shook a lot and then, on the other side of your fence, the ground got all soft and gooey and they sunk!” 

He paused, “It was awful, actually. It was slow, and they were screaming when they went under.” 

“Screwby,” Evan muttered, a little in awe of his own actions. He hadn’t meant to drown anyone in mud, but he’d been so frightened and the country had been so angry, it made sense that things had gotten away from him. 

Nate handed him the flask of water again, and Evan realized that Mike was standing a few feet away from their circle, watching warily. He grinned, even though the motion felt like it would crack the skin off his face. 

“Don’t worry, Roundhead, I won’t let the forest eat you.” 

“I was happier before I knew that was a possibility,” Mike grumbled, but he came forward and crouched by Evan’s side. He clapped him on the shoulder “but I’m glad you didn’t die, Rabbit. You’re turning out to be quite handy to have around.” 

A begrudging compliment from Mike was better than anything else. Evan grinned again, and then remembered something.

“You said the forest tried to eat me?” he said to John.

John nodded. “Stuff was growing out of the ground where your hands were - vines and moss and stuff - and it covered your hands and started to climb up your arms. I pulled it away, but it started to cover your legs. I tried to get it all, but I couldn’t stop it. I’m sorry.”

Evan looked down at his legs. His pants were stained and tattered as if they’d been buried in the forest for a long, long time. At first, he didn’t see what John was apologizing for - pants could be replaced - but then he noticed that the skin showing through the holes in his left pant leg didn’t look right. Slowly, he bent forward and pushed the pants up. From the knee down, his leg and foot were the color of milky tea, with swirls of honey throughout. It gleamed in the afternoon sun. He flexed his ankle experimentally, and the strange foot moved. He looked up to find his friends watching him.

Nate said, “We won’t know until we do tests, but we think it’s wood. Birch, like the tree. John said some of its roots were wrapped around you. Your hand too.”

Evan looked at his hand, incredulous. Two of the fingers on his right hand were the same material as his leg. He’d been holding the flask with it, and he hadn’t even noticed. He turned the hand over and around, flexing his fingers wonderingly. Now that he knew, he could feel a difference in the affected fingers, a coolness and a weight that was different from his other digits, but it was slight.

Evan looked over the shoulder at the tree behind him, smiling gratefully. “Your country has a robust sense of honor. I like it here.” They looked confused, but Evan didn’t elaborate.  

When he agreed to let Solidago’s magic control him, he’d been prepared for it to use him up, to burn through him until there was no him left. Instead, it had politely used the bits of him it needed and replaced them with suitable substitutes. It was the most delicate forced amputation he could imagine, and he couldn’t feel anything but joyful about living with a wooden leg when he’d been ready not to open his eyes ever again.

Nate would understand, he thought, but Nate would know, before Evan even finished that when Evan said that he’d been prepared to die for Solidago, he meant that he’d been ready to die for Nate, and Nate didn’t need the weight of that knowledge on top of everything else he was carrying on his shoulders.

He looked at Nate, who, despite the blood and dirt, looked better than he had since Evan had met him. “You did what you needed to do?”

Nate nodded. “Yes. Your natural disasters drew away enough of their magic users that we were able to break their spell.”

John looked from Nate to Evan and back again. “So what do we do now?”

“We go home,” Nate said, smiling at them. “The King will be wondering where we’ve gotten to.”


End file.
